Damage Scaling Abilities

[(PSN)TertulSee]

The point of this post is to talk about the changes coming in 2020. The reason is because Vauban and Grendel have scaling damage on their abilities now. This makes the prospect of making a tier list for Warframe kinda different because most frames can't compare to scaling damage on a frame. What if all damaging abilities scaled like Vauban’s or cap out like Nidus? I assume many new frames going forward will have this mechanic which makes older frames obsolete unless they have this damage scaling. Also, if every frame had this in some way, that means a lot of adjustments must be made to the initial damage of the abilities. I feel that this system might grow the exponential need for more damage. Power Creep has now snuck its way into Warframes and I don’t know if it makes sense to make a tier list just by the sheer power of the frame's damage (which is the trend of stronger and better performing frames). However, no matter what, major changes will happen eventually and the community needs to take it. I hope that we do get some adjustments to the power of Warframe abilities because certain frames need more damage scaling than others.

Edited January 6, 2020 by (PS4)TertulSee

[(PSN)TertulSee]

I have edited to make more sense. I was rambling on earlier but I am concerned about the state of Warframe damage abilities being overshadowed by future frames completely in the near future. Thanks for reading these ramblings of a crazy living organism.

[CopperBezel]

The thing is, ability damage doesn't mean anything in high level content right now unless it does scale. There's a simple reason for that - equippable and exalted weapons and the three non-weapon warframe abilities that scale on melee weapon mods can become tens of times more powerful than their unmodded base damage, and abilities that absorb damage from weapons can apply that same massively multiplied damage when they don't have an infuriatingly low cap, while warframe direct damage abilities can as much as ... double their damage with the right dedicated build.

There happens to be a funky exception to this in the case of armor strip, which for everything but Mag's polarize tends to be a percentage effect. That's true even of corrosive procs from weapons, and outside of a few special cases, the speed at which those corrosive procs can be applied is pretty clamped down and only multiplies a few times over with increased status chance. So armor strip abilities scale very similarly to armor strip on weapons - and they remain viable at higher levels because of it.

I don't like the idea of scaling damage - we put hard work into upgrading our weapons to squeeze out the last dribble of DPS, and it feels cheap to get it for free and always at-level in our abilities. At the same time we do get this already with armor strip all of the time, and the only things that make that seem more "okay" are the fact that it parallels how weapons already work on armor and the fact that armor is just scaled for a % damage system. Rework armor and make everything flat, and I have no doubt that suddenly warframe armor strip abilities would start getting edged out by particular weapons.

Personally, I'd rather see more abilities lose their token damage - or rather, deal actual damage minimums that aren't displayed in the Arsenal at all like Wisp's Shock Mote - and focus on the other things that abilities are useful for, while using more and smarter ways of basing damage off weapon damage when direct damage really is needed. Automatically leveling them against enemy level is just awkward to me - if it's finely tuned enough to seem fair, it'll succeed in being boring, and otherwise it won't do the scaling job at all. If something has to happen automatically in the background like this, I'd rather have a quick calculation of your average DPS, damage type percentages, and number of status procs per second in a given weapon slot, and base the ability's damage on a function of that. So this one's a pistol scaled ability at 30% and this one's a melee scaled ability at 120% and so on. None of this "just apply the mods" business either, actually base it on the modded weapon, so that there isn't an incentive to get a bad weapon with a high riven disposition and build it for the ability.

Some abilities I'd leave just as they are, though. Nezha's Divine Spears is a decent CC ability at high levels, while at very low levels it's a radial damage ult. Having the ability to kill everyone in your immediate vicinity at a high energy cost is a good ability at MR 5. Having it grow up into a wide CC move you can toss out at any time means you're playing the game differently at MR 15 and it isn't just the same gameplay with inflated numbers. That's important to how these things are designed, too.

Edited January 6, 2020 by CopperBezel

[kwlingo]

Wait Vauban scales now? Nice! Thanks for the heads up

[TARINunit9]

Power Creep is real, but between Mastery Rank locks and using Railjack's ridiculously spongy enemies, I think DE are just content to not care

For example, take something like the Gram Prime. Now after the melee rework, Gram Prime is just far and away the best melee in the game. War, Paracesis, and Galatine Prime were all balanced against each other, but Gram Prime was made the undisputed best. In theory this power creep should just trivialize the early content like Natah and Second Dream, right? Well, the Gram Prime is mastery locked, meaning you flat-out can't earn it until roughly the time you're ready to play Railjack. And since Railjack enemies have one hundred times more health (not an exaggeration, DE has even started power creeping the enemies) you will need that extra Gram Prine damage

At least, that seems to be the theory DE are going for

[0_The_F00l]

Scaling? 

Biggest problem with high level enemies? Exponential health rise paired with armor making ridiculous EHP values. 

Best abilities? That can strip armor 

Why? Makes enemy scaling manageable. 

Armor /defense stripping > scaling damage

[GPrime96]

The damage difference between most Abilities is pretty big. It’s either having a Frame that can go “Oh hey, there’s a beefy enemy. Too bad he gets wrecked no matter what” or “Well, i’m screwed. Might as well used my Weapons to keep going”. Although if a Frame with flat damage can CC well, then they can use that to Survive unless they become experts at target practice and murder you with that going instead (looking at you, Nullifiers). That’s why i enjoy Wisp even though she don’t got the same Scaling as Garuda and Mag, she got enough CC to keep her alive against Hordes of enemies while giving herself more time to kill Enemies.

Mag does have the CC but she also have Magnetize which wrecks Armored Enemies after having their Armor stripped. 10 Mill? Yes please. For Garuda, only thing she need to do is survive because even though her 1 use flat damage from one Orb, it builds up from 10% of Enemy’s Health and a multiplier of enemy’s damage so at very high level, she can scale her damage like crazy even with Armor thanks to her 4 which makes any Damage be 100% Slash. The biggest problem with these two is they are tricky to Master since they rely on a bunch of Ability casting to stay alive and murder enemies while doing so unlike other Meta players which rely on lazier Frames until those two start to reach to levels where most Frames with flat damage start slowing down hard.

Oberon is one of those Frames that can scale his damage while stripping Armor no problem too since his 1 scale from enemy’s Health.

Edited January 6, 2020 by GPrime96

[Anthraxicus]

Abilities should have some scaling. It is amazing how DE seemed to had finally grasped this basic concept......then screw over again with Railjack, releasing enemies with insane armor scaling and raw damaging abilities with no scaling whatsoever to deal with them. No wonder Void Hole is meta....and is probably getting nerfed because everything else is garbage.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Anthraxicus

[Icecryos]

If every damages abilities need to scale in order to stay useful, maybe the real problem is ennemy scaling. What the point of ennemy scaling if everything else in the game need to scale in order to stay revelant. It look like ennemy scaling brought more problems than solutions. Instead, DE could have reworked weapons mods to prevent powercreep.

[Teridax68]

8 hours ago, (PS4)TertulSee said:

What if all damaging abilities scaled like Vauban’s or cap out like Nidus?

If all abilities scaled to match enemy scaling... what would be the point to making enemies scale? Honest question, by the way: I think it was a good thing to give Vauban scaling damage, because it clearly allowed some of his abilities to stay relevant even at enemy levels where most damaging abilities fall off hard. However, it also highlights just how broken enemy scaling is as a system, because as it exists it dooms any fixed amount of damage to eventual uselessness, as is the case for most damaging abilities now. The only two possible states are either situation A, where enemy scaling is irrelevant but damage abilities generally aren't, or situation B, where abilities get to scale and stay relevant, at the cost of defeating the entire point of enemy scaling. Thus, while I'd personally support more scaling damage on our abilities, I think this raises the question as to whether making enemies scale is truly a functional way of implementing difficulty in Warframe, given its many problems.

[Anthraxicus]

53 minutes ago, Icecryos said:

If every damages abilities need to scale in order to stay useful, maybe the real problem is ennemy scaling. What the point of ennemy scaling if everything else in the game need to scale in order to stay revelant. It look like ennemy scaling brought more problems than solutions. Instead, DE could have reworked weapons mods to prevent powercreep.

Well, invert that question. If abilities don't scale to the point they don't even hurt the enemies, why have abilities in the first place?

It is not just enemy survivability that scales. Their damage output and quality also scales. Even if your ability scales, enemy survivability can outpace your abilities. Scaling just makes your abilities stay somewhat relevant and useful.  An ability that can one-shot an enemy whether his is level 1 or level 3000, is boring as hell. Nobody is asking for that. But having the ability deal 0 damage to high level enemies is even more boring, cuz it is irrelevant, therefore the game is just another TPS. 

Suggesting to remove enemy scale is to condemn everyone to fight low level enemies and one shot enemies with a single cast of Crush, Polarize or Avalanche.

Also, scaling damage helps to have more interesting build variation, focusing on power strength, for example, rather than simply adding efficiency, duration or range.

Is it so hard to ask for a balance and have abilities stay relevant and help with DPS?

Edited January 6, 2020 by Anthraxicus

[LoneWolveYoutube]

Adding percent health damage to Warframes would be pretty nice.  Although they do need to be careful how this is implemented, because an energy pack spam/afk ability meme would be very boring.

[Icecryos]

Il y a 5 heures, Anthraxicus a dit :

Well, invert that question. If abilities don't scale to the point they don't even hurt the enemies, why have abilities in the first place?

It is not just enemy survivability that scales. Their damage output and quality also scales. Even if your ability scales, enemy survivability can outpace your abilities. Scaling just makes your abilities stay somewhat relevant and useful.  An ability that can one-shot an enemy whether his is level 1 or level 3000, is boring as hell. Nobody is asking for that. But having the ability deal 0 damage to high level enemies is even more boring, cuz it is irrelevant, therefore the game is just another TPS. 

Suggesting to remove enemy scale is to condemn everyone to fight low level enemies and one shot enemies with a single cast of Crush, Polarize or Avalanche.

Also, scaling damage helps to have more interesting build variation, focusing on power strength, for example, rather than simply adding efficiency, duration or range.

Is it so hard to ask for a balance and have abilities stay relevant and help with DPS?

Actually, if DE doesn't intend to modify ennemy scaling, i agree we should have scaling ability. But reducing the ennemy scaling could accomplish the same thing without making every abilities in the game scale.

For example:

Vauban flechette orb have 300 damages. the damages scale every 10 levels, this mean a lvl 100 unarmored ennemy will take 3000 damages.

A lvl1 ancient healer have 400hp, currently, he scale according to this formula: Current Health = Base Health × ( 1 + ( Current Level − Base Level )² × 0.015 ).

This mean a lvl100 ancient healer can reach roughly 60000HP.

Currently Vauban's flechette orbs deals 3000 damages to a lvl100 ancient healer with 60000HP

If the ennemy health scaling was reduced (by diminishing the coefficient from 0.015 to 0.0015), the ancient healer would have 6000HP instead and the flechette orb wouldn't need damages scaling, same goes for every other abilities in the game.

The drawback of this system is that the current weapons damages would be way too high, every damages mods should be reduced. The advantage is that the frames wouldn't need ability scaling anymore.

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Icecryos